


Trouble

by FormerBunhead



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: During Canon, F/M, What's he thinking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27845862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FormerBunhead/pseuds/FormerBunhead
Summary: What's he thinking? What's hethinking?Well, I can't tell you what was on his mind at Quaker Meeting. But I gave the dinner party episode my best shot.
Relationships: Claire & Fleabag (Fleabag), Fleabag & Priest (Fleabag), Fleabag/Godmother (Fleabag), Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 84





	1. Gin

**Author's Note:**

> On my nine-trillionth rewatch, I started musing on what our man had going on under there at the famed Passive-Aggressive Dinner Party. So here!
> 
> This fic was inspired by a conversation with some fellow fans, one of whom pointed out how much Fleabag doesn't give a shit about the Priest in Episode 1. Someone else mentioned, by contrast, all the ways he keeps trying to get her attention because he's already smitten. I couldn't stop thinking about that dynamic and threw my own versions of these characters into the mix to see what would happen. 
> 
> This fic is obviously pre-Fox & Flea, but it's still Andrew and Phoebe. I think you'll recognize them even in this setting. ❤️

_He plays her an angsty yet somehow upbeat Taylor Swift earworm about meeting someone you know will completely fuck up your life and getting involved with them anyway. It’s our theme song, he says. As soon as you walked into that engagement dinner, before I even knew a thing about you, I literally thought,_ Here comes trouble _. And when you sat down next to me with your soft-focus silent film star face and your polite fury and your bad attitude, it was all over. I spent the rest of the night trying not to look at your boobs and praying that you would turn out to be a bore so I wouldn’t have to fall in love with you. No such luck, she says. None at all, he replies, and kisses her._

_Fox & Flea: Dreams Chapter 6_

* * *

It just really figures that on his one night out since moving to this neighborhood, he winds up with a front-row seat to a domestic shitshow masquerading as a dinner party.

Beggars can’t be choosers, but this is not his idea of a good time. 

When Caroline had invited him to the engagement do, she’d made it sound like a party. That was the only reason he’d accepted. He figured he could turn up and do a quick lap, preferably avoiding any weird conversations about his profession, which is why he's out of uniform. The plan was to mingle a little, then disappear back home. He couldn't wait to put on sweatpants and mix up a gin-based beverage and crack the spine on the brand-new mystery novel he’d pre-ordered from a local bookstore. 

But at this point, seated among five people who all seem to loathe each other to varying degrees, it’s looking like a blissfully nerdy evening is not in the cards. 

He wonders whether watching a complete stranger's family dynamic deteriorate in real time is more or less painful than watching your own relations melt down. It's a toss up. His own blood much prefers naked aggression to covert bitchiness, so he’s given up trying to follow the low-grade hostility ricocheting around this particular table. On the other hand, it’s a nice change of pace that none of this gang screams expletives or punches each other in public.

That is, until they do.

* * *

When he got to the restaurant, he was surprised to see Caroline and Bill waiting by the hostess stand. She’d trilled with glee at the sight of him, kissed him lavishly on both cheeks. Then she was off and running: She was _terribly_ delighted he had made it, she couldn’t _wait_ to show him off, there was a little mix-up with the reservation, the table would be ready in two shakes, et cetera.

“The table?” he’d asked, hoping his voice didn’t betray the sinking feeling in his gut. 

“Of course,” she replied. “The rest of the family is joining us soon.” 

“The rest of the family?” He knew he was just repeating words, but he couldn’t help it. He was totally thrown. “Are there... many of them?”

“Oh no, darling,” she said. “Not to worry. Perfectly cozy. Just us three” - an indulgent smile - “and Claire and Martin, you know them. And the other one.”

“The other one?” He should really look into a side hustle as a trained myna bird. Christ. 

“My younger daughter,” Bill managed to put in. “Phoebe.”

“Yes, Phoebe,” Caroline said, her smile showing truly impressive levels of strain. “Interesting girl. A bit…” - she waggled her head vaguely - “Well, nevermind, you’ll see. Come along.” 

His mind reeled as Caroline attached herself to his arm and aimed them at the dining room. He was completely unprepared to make hours of small talk with a group of strangers. It’s not that he wasn’t good at it; he could be a right charmer when he wanted to. He just… didn’t want to. He was tired, and unsettled in his new parish, and not sleeping well. 

Also, he was lonely. Which was… whatever, it was fine. It was familiar. The main thing was that he had a specific routine for dealing with isolation, and strangely enough, it did not involve social events. After too many years of reckless distraction when solitude loomed, he’d finally learned to make peace with it. To burrow into it, to become its friend. Ironically, he discovered, fighting loneliness tooth and nail just made it worse. It was only when he surrendered that it passed on its own. 

Hence the sweatpants and gin and mystery novel. 

Yet there he was, being steered through a crowded, buzzing restaurant by a clingy society maven and her elderly hen-pecked fiance, trying to gear himself up for the onslaught. 

_You can cope with this_ , he told himself. He already knew Claire and Martin. Claire was all right, he actually quite liked her brisk, no-nonsense disposition. Martin was awful but manageable. He knew nothing about Phoebe ( _The other one?_ Who went around referring to their partner's child that way?!) but given Caroline’s prickly non-description, maybe she’d be at least somewhat interesting. 

He gave himself one last pep talk as they approached the table. _Just make it through an hour, mate. Then you can go. Game face. Charisma on a tap. You can do this. One hour._

He smiled grimly and took his seat.


	2. Champagne

He’s actually quite enjoying himself by the time Claire arrives. The champagne helps. It’s very good and there’s a lot of it. Plus, now that he’s shifted gears on his expectations, it’s not hard to play the part of Convivial Dinner Party Guest.  
  
He’s honestly pretty chuffed with his performance. _The cool priest,_ they’ll be calling him after this, he imagines. 

Claire shakes his hand and says hello to her dad. She barely nods at Caroline, who barely nods back. Okay, so that’s a thing. Noted. 

“Where’s your sister?” Bill asks as Claire sits down, distractedly tapping away at her phone before stowing it in her bag. 

“How should I know,” Claire says coolly. “I saw her in the lobby and then she disappeared.” 

“Probably smoking,” Caroline tuts. “Dreadful habit.” 

Claire briefly looks up at him, and he gives her a tiny eye roll. She purses her lips together to stop a smile. “I imagine she’ll turn up eventually. She usually does.” 

“Like a bad penny,” Caroline deadpans with a flourish of her wrist. Claire and even Bill chuckle politely. He widens his eyes with a little shake of his head. Caroline’s gone from vague insults to outright jibes in nothing flat, and the rest of them are apparently along for the ride. He can’t imagine what this Phoebe has done to make them so eager to shit all over her. 

A moment later, Claire clears her throat and juts her chin towards the rear of the restaurant. Caroline turns her head with a look of naked fear that she quickly cloaks in disdain, then further masks in solicitude.  
  
“Darling,” she purrs, standing up and extending a hand. “So glad you could join us.” It’s clear that what Caroline means is, “You’ve kept us waiting and I hate you.”

“Hey,” says the woman who’s just appeared holding what looks like three shots of tequila in one glass. “Sorry.” Her voice is pitched low, dispassionate yet somehow ironic, in that she doesn’t really sound sorry at all. 

She takes Caroline’s proffered hand in passing, as if it’s a dead fish, and screws her face into something that could either be a grin or a grimace. He wants to laugh. He feels like he understands their entire relationship in that small moment, and he’s pretty sure he’s not on Caroline’s side in it.

He gets a good look at her as she squeezes her dad’s shoulder warmly. She’s tall and narrow, with the most interesting face he’s ever seen, all planes and angles softened by enormous dark doe eyes. She’s wearing some kind of dress that’s also maybe pants that’s also, okay, wow, it doesn’t really have a middle to it. And there's a whole thing happening with red lipstick that he’s alarmed to find is melting his brain a little.

This must be the fabled Phoebe. She looks like trouble, plain and simple. 

She doesn’t make eye contact with Claire as she rounds the table, but they smile tightly in one other’s direction. Then she sits down beside him.

“Hi,” she says politely, but she barely even glances at him. No one moves to introduce them. What a weird fucking family.   
  
Meanwhile, she buries her face in the menu. He’s irrelevant to her, extraneous. Completely below her notice. 

Which is crazy, because his heart is suddenly pounding so hard he’s sure she and everyone else in the restaurant can hear it. It’s wild how fast it hits him, the realization that he _does not care for it one bit_ , being left outside her orbit. 

He wants _in_ with this woman. He wants her to find him as fascinating as he finds her. Which is very, very fascinating, and she’s literally said three words. 

_Please let her be a terrible bore,_ he prays frantically. _Please, dear God, next time she opens her mouth, let her turn out to be a bargain-bin Paris Hilton or who the fuck ever._ He’s aware his references are dated, but he thinks God will get the gist.

Even as he prays, he knows there's not a chance in hell, or heaven for that matter, that it will be answered. But he does it anyway, because he's on thin ice. He needs a miracle, and he needs it to be that her mind is far less fascinating than her body and her face and that outfit and --

Holy shit, he's in so much trouble.

He takes a deep breath, then a huge swallow of champagne. He’s made endless ill-advised choices in his life, but far fewer since he went to seminary and became a priest. That was the whole point.

So why is it that somehow, he knows she’s going to be his biggest mistake yet?


	3. Tequila

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ["So what do you do."](https://giphy.com/gifs/y1W6UjXdwAPFQzvxQQ) (Click the link to see a GIF of the moment he gets her to look at him full on!)
> 
> [(Bonus charisma factory vibes with Godmother)](https://giphy.com/gifs/Ioip34gOUkANrBA7dz)

He cannot get her to fucking look at him. It’s driving him nuts. He has absolutely no business trying to capture her attention, but he’s doing it anyway. And it’s not working.

She laughs politely at his jokes, smiles at his charming comments. He goes big and very candid, especially as he starts working up a good buzz. Everyone else seems to find his honesty refreshing, possibly because it distracts from the fact that the air is thick with barely suppressed rage. 

Martin has joined them now and is clearly a big fan of his schtick, which, fuck Martin. Dude is a buffoon. Also, he can tell Phoebe detests the man. She’s putting on a show of civility, but more than once he catches her sneering at Martin like he’s something she found on the bottom of her shoe. 

Meanwhile, she won’t even give him, an attractive priest with charisma out the wazoo, the time of day. Come on. 

He thinks he’s almost got her when Caroline ices out their over-eager server, who's offering more champagne. Phoebe immediately orders another tequila from the poor woman, and he hops on the bandwagon without a second thought. Not just because he’s always up for another drink, but because it’s such a kind way to throw a bone to this wriggling puppy of a waitress. He wishes he’d thought of it himself. After, there’s a quick round of back and forth smiling - like recognizing like - which tides him over for a bit.

Later, as Caroline holds forth about art and travel, Bill keeps trying to get a word in, which is painfully awkward. He very nearly manages to make eye contact with Phoebe as he searches for a bellwether in this mess, but her eyes immediately skate away to Caroline. As if she’d rather listen to this woman’s bullshit than look at him.

That really rankles him. It’s starting to seem deliberate, the way she's snubbing him. 

Abruptly, he angles his body away from Phoebe and towards Caroline, staring intently, pulsing as much energy at her as he can muster. He pretends to be deeply interested in Caroline’s monologue about whatever in the seventh circle of hell a sexhibition is. 

This used to be his silver bullet - blatantly ignore the actual object of your interest; flirt outrageously with someone else. Like reverse psychology, but for sex. Not that he wants to have sex with Phoebe. He just wants her to fucking look at him. 

(Right? Right.)

Meanwhile, Caroline is making him look _great_. What a pro. She’s beaming every ounce of woo back at him and then some, bless her. He glances at Phoebe to check if the deadly charm routine is working its magic. 

No dice. She's in some kind of glowering contest with Claire. He wonders again what the story is there.

And that's enough to snap him out of it. 

The wine’s arrived, thank God, so he turns away from Caroline and downs a huge swig, already berating himself. Fucking hell, what is wrong with him. He's a _celibate Catholic_ _priest_. The whole reason he became one was to stop this sort of destructive nonsense, to shield others from his toxic manipulations. 

How did he end up here again, treating someone made in the _imago dei_ like bait, and someone else like a trophy fish? Maybe he hasn’t come quite so far as he thought.

At that moment, he decides to stop playing games. Phoebe is an adult human with her own existence outside of him, her own inner life. Meanwhile, the rest of her family is treating her like a ticking time bomb, and the least he can do is let her know that someone actually sees her. That she’s of value. The way she did for their waitress.

(Also, it’s a last ditch effort. Mainly because he’s pretty sure he’s never going to see her again, except possibly in passing at the wedding. He’s self-reflective enough to admit that he’s going to push this boundary, even if it’s the worst idea he’s had in ages.)

So he turns, and looks right at her, and asks her the first thing that pops into his head. It comes out weird, like a statement instead of a question, but whatever. It works.

It fucking works.

And it’s just as he thought it would be, getting her full attention. Like looking into the sun, if the sun was some kind of obscenely beautiful cross between a sultry silent film star and a rubber-faced funny lady. 

He barely even hears her answer to his stupid, obvious question. In the five-second exchange, there’s something between them that’s not about the words they’re saying. He can tell that he’s somehow short-circuited her highly sophisticated defense system. And now that he's past it, he realizes that for the last 45 minutes, she’s actually been off somewhere else in her mind. 

When they look at each other, something shifts. She’s present for the first time all night. 

Then she moves on and reassures everyone that her business really is going well, which they don't seem to buy. That snaps together another solid section of this lot’s 1,000 piece weird-vibes jigsaw puzzle. But he can think about the implications of that later.

For now, he can't stop grinning. His heart is slamming around in his chest again, but giddily this time. He’s still stuck in the moment her eyes locked onto his. Not just her eyes: something deeper, more essential. The second she looked back at him, he got lost and found at the same time. And he could tell the same thing might, just possibly, be stirring in her. 

He’s a total fucking goner, and he can't even bring himself to be mad about it.


	4. Nicotine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ["Well fuck you then."](https://media.giphy.com/media/7Dy4j7XQ7Brxux5qI6/source.mov)
> 
> (Click the link to see a GIF of this moment.)

Now that they’ve connected, every moment he spends not making eye contact with her is torture. He can _feel_ her in his periphery. His entire being is vibrating with awareness.

When she leaves the table (ostensibly for the loo, but he’s no dummy), he misses her. It's deadly dull without her spark, and he can’t fucking take the stilted surface-level conversation anymore. 

So he excuses himself. 

Caroline does not look happy. She probably knows what he’s up to. Oh well.

He makes his way through the restaurant and scans the rear for a service entrance, but there is none. He glimpses a hallway off to one side and follows it, where it dead-ends in a metal door bearing an emergency exit sign. 

He decides to take his chances. He pushes it open, cringing slightly, then smiles in relief. No alarm. 

He walks into a small covered alcove, then out onto the service landing. And there she is, smoking on the pavement below. She’s absurdly elegant, standing with her head tipped back against the wall, long neck exposed, eyes lidded, cigarette dangling carelessly from her long fingers. 

Now that he’s here, he realizes he has no actual plan, but when has that ever stopped him before? He ambles down the stairs, laughing to himself at the ridiculousness of it all. She gives him a small smile in return. He can tell she’s not thrilled about the interruption to her private moment of zen. Well, she’s just going to have to make the best of it because he’s not leaving until she talks to him again.

He ends up going with the most straightforward explanation for why he’s followed her out here and asks if she can spare a cigarette. He hasn’t smoked since university, but she doesn’t know that. (Or does she? He feels like she might be able to _tell_ things about him.) 

He’d been banking on swaggering out here, extracting some basic biographical information from her, and eye-fucking her half to death so he could move on with his evening. But now that they’re this close to one another, without any tables or wine glasses or irritating relatives to buffer things, he’s freaking out.

For one thing, there’s the jumpsuit (as he now knows it’s called, because Caroline made a barbed remark about its “daring silhouette” earlier). He hasn’t been this close to naked flesh in a while, especially not when it’s attached to a person he genuinely likes, so the whole brazen side-boob situation has him pretty riled up.

Suddenly, meeting her gaze is not an option. So instead, he plays it cool. He puts the cigarette to his lips and, as she lights it, looks resolutely at the ground, instead of at her eyes. Or her chest. Or her unruly mop of hair or her lovely arms or the gold charm at her throat that he can’t quite make out because it’s too close to the other stuff he’s trying not to notice. 

Drawing on the cigarette calms him down, and he weighs how best to prize out some precious nugget of insight into who she really is. It’s something he’s good at, getting people to open up to him. He could go with disarming (“Is your stepmother always such a cunt, or just on Saturdays?”) or revealing (“Do you and your sister get on? Only I’m sensing some tension.”) or incisive (“What exactly did you do to make your entire family treat you like a hooligan?”) or low-stakes (“So, a cafe. What’s that like?”). 

He could also ask the only questions he really wants answers to. Something along the lines of, “How do you feel about Catholic priests, and would you be willing to have sex with one, specifically me? Also, what's your stance on marriage and babies? With a priest, I mean? That priest, again, being me? Yes, of course I’m celibate, but that’s beside the point, don’t you think?”

Nah. Save himself the humiliation. 

He leans his shoulder against the wall, right against hers. He could kiss her, he’s that near. But he either chickens out or comes to his senses, depending on your point of view, and asks her a dickless question about her family. 

And as he does, literally as the words leave his mouth, she flicks her entire cigarette onto the pavement and struts past him without responding, so close her arm brushes his. 

He’s stunned. He can’t tell if she’s being nasty, or glib, or if he’s really just that incidental to her. Regardless, the effect is the same: he’s back outside her orbit, back outside her walls. And that pisses him off. 

He snorts. Things are going so badly at this point that he may as well say exactly what he’s thinking: “Well fuck you then.” 

She’s halfway up the stairs, and she whips her head around so fast that he’s totally unprepared for the full force of her gaze. 

She’s giving him everything. Mostly incredulity, with a hint of intrigue. She knits her brows together. It’s like she’s seeing him clearly for the first time. 

He has nothing to lose. So he smiles and shows her who he is. She has walls built high against the world? He’ll give her the doors to his heart, flung wide. She’s all piss and vinegar? He’s milk and honey and, let’s be honest, gin in a tin. She wants to put him in a box labeled _Boring Religious Authority Figure, Can’t Be Arsed_ ? He’ll be as disconcerting as he damn well pleases.  
  
To his surprise, that changes everything. A huge smile breaks across her face. Jesus, he’d thought she was beautiful before. He realizes that this is her actual smile. Everything that came before was a facsimile. 

She continues walking back inside, but she pauses almost imperceptibly before she crosses the threshold, still grinning. 

He smiles to himself then, terrified of what he’s gotten himself into but not quite able to regret it. As he stands there in the night, smoking the cigarette she gave him right down to its filter, he lets his mind drift to its familiar, peaceful resting place.  
  
He settles on a contemplative prayer he hasn’t done in a while, choosing it for its rote form as well as its content. He tends to see Christ as the warm, nurturing father he never had, rather than a strict, ascetic sourpuss always fussing about everyone’s transgressions. But you gotta know when to pull out the big guns. And this is one of those times. 

Every time he exhales a lungful of smoke, he breathes the same prayer: _Lord, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner._


	5. Wine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote a whole philosophical chapter about [a two-second clip from this show](https://media.giphy.com/media/ZZDtOZnvkm8Hjaf506/giphy.gif).

When he gets back to the table, he can tell they’ve been talking about him. He knows he’s a novelty, so it’s unsurprising. He catches the tail end of an obnoxious comment from Martin but blows it off; the oily asshole is just too tragic to take seriously. 

He does get tired of the jokes, though. He gets it - celibacy freaks people out, and humor helps them process their discomfort. But at this point he's heard every jab at least once. Not only is it tedious, it's a reminder that he's always going to be held at a distance by most people. At times, that feels like a badge of honor, but it can also be terribly lonely. 

The truth is that the discipline of celibacy does not come naturally to him, or to most priests for that matter, but that’s exactly why it’s important. In the past, he lived to feed his basest appetites, which in turn made them multiply exponentially like gremlins, which in turn consumed almost everything good and human about him.

That’s initially what drew him to the priesthood - its rituals, its ordinances. It seemed a bit like putting those bumpers in the gutters of a bowling lane. The ball still gets to be a ball, but it can no longer veer too far off course or ruin anyone else’s game. Also, you have half a chance of knocking down the pins set before you.

He knows how sad that sounds. Going through life on the safety setting, hemmed in, confined, because you’re a threat to yourself and others. Needing a crutch to make it all survivable. Setting your course with the goal of getting out of here having done as little harm as possible and, if you're lucky, a bit of good. 

It must seem to most people like taking the coward’s way out, and to be fair, it probably is. He’s well aware he’s chosen caution and peace over chaos and passion. The latter are more his natural speed and sometimes, he thinks, essential ingredients to a life well lived. Depending on the day, he wonders if he’s sold himself short by taking vows that keep the bawdier, more dangerous elements of being human at bay.

(Today, as it happens, is a day where he wonders if he made the right call. Who could possibly imagine why.)

Despite all that, the religious life is a good fit for him. He still gets to be the bowling ball; he’s completely himself, even without sex. He’s always been comfortable in his own body, he’s always liked feeling present in his own physicality, and his vocation hasn’t really changed anything in that regard. There are theologians who prefer to separate heaven and earth, denigrating the flesh in order to elevate the spirit, but that’s never appealed to him. 

He believes in an afterlife, of course, but he’s also of the opinion that what we do here and now matters immensely to God. After all, incarnation is practically the whole thing with Catholicism: the Word made flesh, the blood of salvation in a goblet of wine, God’s body - his fucking _body_ \- somehow subsumed in a paper-thin wafer. God as a helpless mewling refugee baby and God as a sullen teenager hiding from his parents in the temple and God as a man cut down in his prime by an empire whose lies he exposed simply by existing. The idea that God doesn’t care about this life is absurd if you take even half a second to read the actual scriptures. You want to talk about _bawdy,_ try out most of the Hebrew Bible, for fuck’s sake.

(He does love a sermon. This is good, he should write it down before he forgets.)

All that to say. 

He makes a choice when he returns to the table. 

He could loop around his chair to the other side. He could bypass Phoebe entirely by coming from the opposite direction. There are so many ways to take a normal route to his seat that don’t involve flying into her airspace. 

But instead, he skirts close to her, squeezing through the small gap between Phoebe’s chair and his own. He's quick about it, but he does it with intention, because his physical body wants to be close to hers in a specific way. In the way that two people’s bodies sometimes are. 

For a fleeting second, he has this absurd and intoxicating vision of them as a long-married couple, at dinner with her shitty dysfunctional family, hewing close to one another for warmth and protection. Squeezing by her, in this imagined universe, is a way of showing her that he won’t let any of these bastards get at her. It’s a little assurance between just the two of them. “Hi,” it says, “it’s me, your person. I’m here.” 

It’s such a lovely thought that it almost breaks his heart. 

(It’s probably also why, when Caroline redirects the conversation to his vocation, he blurts out, “Well, marriage is a calling, too, of course.” Very smooth, buddy _, literally nobody_ was talking about marriage.) 

That’s the worst part about all of this, he realizes. He’s longing for something with this woman that is really very ordinary, one of the most ordinary things a person can do. But it's something he can never have. Not only because of his vows, but because of who he is. That kind of intimacy is not in the cards for him, even if he was a free agent.  
  
Whenever he’s fallen in lust or even in love, it has led only to destruction and woe. He wishes the reality of that statement were only half as melodramatic as it sounds. But he knows there is something so fundamentally toxic about him, baked right into his emotional DNA, that his love can only be allowed to point in one direction, and that is upward to heaven.  
  
Hoping for anything else is an exercise in futility. It's like asking a bowling ball to be a biscuit. 

If he cares about Phoebe, which he does, which again is _absolutely crazy_ because they've said a grand total of five complete sentences to each other, one of which was "fuck you" - if he cares about her, he'll leave her alone. 

So he does. He answers some boring questions about his vocation and his family as honestly as he can, probably too honestly. Really leans into the _priesting is super-duper peaceful and fulfilling_ narrative, but zhuzhes it up with some funny stuff. Everyone eats it up.   
  
And then she goes and fucks the whole thing up by paying attention to him. 


	6. More Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "[Are you a real priest?](https://media.giphy.com/media/dZcLK3cC9ONaQf4LeM/giphy.gif)" 
> 
> "[Well, it's mainly hard because he's a pedophile](https://media.giphy.com/media/0bJJ6zLTMFQFezoO3e/giphy.gif)."
> 
> (Click the links for GIFs of these moments!)

“ _Are_ you a real priest?” 

He almost bursts out laughing when she says it. 

Good thing he stops himself, he has a mouth full of mash and green beans. Imagine if he sprayed it across the table. This constipated crowd would die of secondhand embarrassment on the spot.

Now that he's decided to stop agonizing over Phoebe, he’s in high spirits. He's taken Martin down a few pegs for shits and giggles, then indulged Caroline in collecting him as another one of her Very Interesting Friends. He’s also getting pretty tipsy, which is ill-advised, but in a fun way. At least so far.

So when Phoebe not only looks at him of her own volition - eyes narrowed, scarlet mouth skeptical - but speaks to him, asks _him_ a question, and then it’s _that_ question… well. Who could expect him to contain his delight.

He sternly reminds himself that delight is off the menu. He’s leaving her alone. Yes. That is very much the plan. Right.

But Jesus, come on. She’s asked him if he’s a _real priest_ , and she’s looking at him as if the answer could really go either way. And what is that if not _fucking delightful._ God himself wouldn’t be able to hold out.

He considers replying that, no, obviously he’s not a real priest, there’s no way the Catholic church would ordain someone with his raw animal magnetism and filthy mouth. Fortunately, he’s still sober enough to realize just in time that he hasn’t built up that kind of capital with her yet.

Instead, he returns her gaze, still chewing, unable to hide his mirth. “Yeah,” he says with an incredulous shake of his head, and goes back to his meal. 

He can feel her looking at him. Much to his gratification, he detects a touch of disappointment at his response. He glances at her to confirm, and yup. Still got it. 

Unfortunately for his already tenuous hold on ignoring her, he also senses that she likes a challenge. What happened outside before intrigued her. She’s interested in _him_ now. The tables have turned, the balance of power has shifted, and it’s done so in his favor.

Former Fuckboy Andrew would have exploited this weakness immediately and to great effect. He would’ve flooded her with flirtation, smoldered at her a bit, then strategically iced her out at the last second. They’d be having sex someplace ridiculous - a walk-in fridge, say - before the dessert course arrived.

Somehow, he's getting a vibe that she would not be completely opposed to this idea even now. Hmm. He permits himself to imagine it, briefly but vividly.

Thankfully, Current Godboy Andrew manages to get a handle on the fantasy before it runs away with him. _That’s not you anymore_ , he reprimands himself. _She’s a person, not a prize._

(Plus, how do you even have a restaurant quickie with somebody wearing a jumpsuit, anyway. It’s completely impractical, you’d have to undo the buttons or whatever at the top and take the whole thing down to the waist, and then there’s probably some kind of zipper, and -- nevermind, this is not a helpful line of thought.)

He pulls himself back from the brink again and forces himself to answer some more banal questions from the family. He’s candid, and charming, and funny, and sincere. Not to win her over or anything, although he does get a few more exchanges of buzzy eye contact out of the deal. No, it’s just that he likes to amuse people when he can. He’s comfortable playing the part of Everyone's Favorite Unexpectedly Witty and Plain-spoken Priest.

Also, Drunk Andrew, who he’s never managed to shake off, really sort of enjoys pushing people’s buttons. 

So when Caroline tosses off a few barbs about Phoebe’s appearance, he’s fucking indignant. It’s obvious to him that this bitch is crazy jealous of her own step-daughter, but the insults seem to land hard on Phoebe nonetheless, even as she plays them off. His wine-soaked brain decides his only recourse is to avenge her, and he’s going to do it by rendering Caroline speechless.

He lies in wait for the right moment. Once Caroline starts needling him about his brother, he sees his chance and goes for broke. Like any good Catholic, he spares a moment of guilt for airing his family’s dirty laundry, but if they’d wanted him to say nice things, they shouldn’t have been such evil unrepentant assholes. Nevertheless, he makes a note of it for his next confession. 

Everyone is, of course, stunned by his reply, once he finally manages to get it out over Caroline’s theatrics. He experiences a brief sting of regret as the silence lingers; he’s gone too far. But then, in his periphery, he sees Phoebe’s eyes widen with… what is that? Admiration? Glee? Relief?

Oh wow. She’s loving this. He's _impressed_ her. He’s not imagining it: he’s her new hero. 

He sees then that, no matter how politely mute and reserved she’s been so far, this is _her_ usual role at a dinner party. _She’s_ the one who says shocking things for sport. _She’s_ the merry relational pyromaniac who launches Molotov cocktails of unvarnished truth into otherwise pleasant chats, just to watch it all burn. 

No wonder they’re terrified.  
  
His heart goes out to her. She’s got no allies in a family whose conversational dynamic seems to run solely on rounds of friendly fire. But not anymore. Now, when it comes to insisting on honesty at the expense of civility, she’s met her match. And it’s him. 

See? Fucking _delightful_.


	7. Even More Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our priest flies a little too close to the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With gratitude to my beta reader BWP, who midwifed this chapter through many, many iterations and helped me get back to the heart of the story. Thank you for reminding me how important it is to write what makes you and your readers happy. ❤️

* * *

Everything’s delightful! And then, everything isn’t.

It starts with Claire. Her strident declarations of optimal mental health. The revelation that no one, including her own husband, knows what she does for work. And finally, her derisive response to the therapy voucher, which is admittedly the most insanely inappropriate birthday present he’s ever heard of. This coming from a priest who once received a voucher to a strip club after he’d done a parishioner’s mum’s funeral mass. ( _Mum loved their chicken wings,_ the accompanying note said. It was all very charming.) 

Strangely, the counseling voucher appears to offend Phoebe far less than it does Claire, rattling loose something that must have been precarious already. If Phoebe is a bomb, Claire is a live grenade, and she’s one accidental jostle away from exploding. He should’ve noticed sooner, but to be fair, he was rather preoccupied.

The sisters exchange a few pointed words, the subtext of which seems decipherable only to them, and the next thing he knows, the collective mood has slid right off a fucking cliff.

He acknowledges to himself that this would be the polite time to call it a night: pudding mostly done, early services the next morning, it’s been a pleasure, blah blah blah. No one would care, and honestly, leaving them to it would be a mercy. Let them sort this thing out without an audience.

But when Claire glares at Phoebe and stomps away from the table, he accepts that he’s not going anywhere. To be a priest is to be a professional spectator at the colorful pageant of other people’s rich and messy lives. He’d be the first to admit that he’s sometimes a bit too intrigued by his parishioners’ confessions, enjoying the contrast with his own intentionally ho-hum choices. Which means he’s not too proud or pious to recognize that he’s going to extract whatever scraps of drama he can from this trainwreck of a family dinner before he goes back to his reliably normal life.

He’s about to splash the dregs of the last bottle of wine into his glass when he notices Phoebe staring hard after Claire’s retreating figure like she’s trying to solve a riddle. She looks worried, so he tops her off instead. This is a gesture of solidarity, he tells himself. A communication, once again, that someone sees her and cares. He’s a terrific fake boyfriend like that. 

The cumulative effect of all the alcohol he’s consumed loosens him up enough that he watches her openly as he pours. She doesn’t seem to notice. She’s disappeared into herself again, studying the path Claire cuts across the restaurant, a little crease between her brows. Her jaw is set (champion tooth grinder, he bets), her spine a ramrod. Everything about her seems hard and closed off - except for her eyes. Those are huge, troubled, unease pooling on their liquid surface.

Phoebe’s taking a distracted sip from the glass he just filled when Caroline, never one to miss an opportunity to pull focus, suddenly widens her eyes. “Oh darling,” Caroline says, all concern. “I think you’ve spilt some wine down your --” She flutters her fingers at Phoebe’s chest with a smile that manages to be both magnanimous and stone-cold. 

Phoebe looks down, a bit flustered, and so does everyone else. Okay, wow. There they all are, regarding the split right down the middle of her outfit. He’d been filling in whatever was happening there all night with sidelong glances and his imagination, but now he’s just looking at the situation tits-on, as it were.

There’s no spill of any kind, of course. Phoebe’s being punished for snapping something too raw and truthful at Claire, thus grabbing attention away from The Caroline Show. The star of which, incidentally, is now preening while her toe catches the hem of his trousers for the nine millionth time that evening. Well, he refuses to play along with this passive-aggressive nonsense.

Since his eyes are already on Phoebe’s chest, he allows them to linger there, staring just a moment too long at the shadow cast by the curve of her breast against the long, smooth plane of her torso. He hears her breath make the tiniest hitch, and he drags his gaze up to hers. Raises his eyebrows a fraction of an inch and smirks almost imperceptibly. 

Self-appointed fake boyfriend to the rescue.

Phoebe must realize what he’s doing, because she emits a little sound somewhere between choking and chuckling. Eyes laughing, she smirks back. There is in fact a truly ill-advised amount of mutual smirking, considering that he’s a priest and she’s a woman in a provocative jumpsuit. But he loves that she's game for this, and they both push it a little too far. Just to the point where he feels Caroline going sour in his periphery. It’s extremely satisfying. 

Phoebe squares her shoulders. “Good looking out, Caroline,” she says cheerfully, tilting her head at her future step-mother. “I’d better go take care of this.” She points directly at her breasts with both hands, in the vicinity of the alleged wine spill, and he has to stifle a laugh. 

She scrapes her chair back. But before she can head off to the loo in Claire’s wake, Martin lurches to his feet in front of her. They’re standing almost nose to nose. It’s cartoonish and mutually aggressive and weirdly tense. Also, kind of hot. 

She moves to sidestep Martin, but he puts out his hand to block her. “I know what you’re doing,” he sneers. “Sit down. She doesn’t want to see you.”  
  
Phoebe glares and picks up her glass of wine. It sloshes dangerously, and everyone stiffens, wondering if it’s going to end up in Martin’s face. But she just puts it to her lips and drains it, never breaking eye contact with Martin. Then, she slams the glass back onto the table, slaps Martin’s hand out of the way, and smacks her shoulder into his as she stalks past him towards the loo. 

Jesus. To think he could’ve been at home under a duvet with his novel right now. Inspector Gamache has got nothing on this crowd. 

Meanwhile, Martin grips his shoulder and whimpers, slumping back into his seat like a melodramatic football player who just received a career-ending blow from a passing gust of wind. He immediately searches out someone to share in his misery. 

Evidently a priest will do, because Martin snickers at him and jerks his chin towards the bathroom. “Lady drama, am I right?” Martin huffs, rolling his eyes. “You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with this bullshit. You dodged a bullet, man.” 

He almost laughs. Martin would have no way of knowing that he spent his entire adult life prior to the priesthood both fomenting "lady drama" and then dealing with its fallout. In fact, he had almost certainly uttered those exact misogynistic words during his illustrious career as an absolute prick, possibly when his ex-wife tossed him out on his philandering ass for the umpteenth and final time. _Dude_ , he wants to tell Martin, _I’ve never dodged a bullet in my life._

On the other hand, Martin’s right that drama, lady or otherwise, is a non-issue now. He’s set up his entire life as a shield against those terrifying emotional highs and debilitating lows, protecting his own peace - and the peace of others - at all costs. It's made him boring, sure, but it’s also made him grateful and calm and steady. The best possible version of himself. 

But now there’s Phoebe. And she’s really making him second-guess whether peace is worth it.

As he watches her streak after her sister like a meteor, he understands something essential about her, about her intensity, about its impact on her relationship with Claire. When someone is worthy of her, this woman does not fuck around. No matter what else is between them, how different they are, how much they appear to dislike each other, she’ll go to battle every time. Ride or die.

Phoebe’s love, he can see, is a force of nature, active, dynamic. Constantly shifting, mercurial even, but always there, whether you can see it or not, like the sun. Fiery, blazing, capable of burning the heart out of anyone who gets in its path.  
  
He wants that love for himself. Fuck calm, fuck steady, fuck peaceful. It's time to Icarus this shit. 


	8. Blood and Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a ride. This chapter took a ridiculously long time and an absurd amount of energy to produce. I think I might have learned how to be a writer during it -- you hate every step, you type thousands of words and get rid of most of them, and in the end, it's worth it. As PWB would say: "Panic, panic, hope." (Have you watched [Vogue's 73 Questions with her](https://youtu.be/D3mmqLVi_QQ) in which she describes her writing method as such? This is also the one where she coins the phrase "Murder, murder, hair" to describe our priest's favorite show, Killing Eve. 😂) 
> 
> Thanks to the legendary bingewritepurge for her ongoing midwifery of this silly and delightful fan fiction. Someday, lady, I'll do you proud!

* * *

He does not, of course, Icarus this shit. 

First off, he’s just remembered he’s a priest. He seems to recall that falling in love with beautiful strangers is a big no-no. Whoops. Shoulda worn the collar.

For another thing... he’s pretty drunk. Drunk as a skunk, in fact, and skunks can’t fly to the _sun,_ you nutter. Not even fun, cool, Catholic skunks that are a total riot at a dinner party. 

Not that he’s being fun, or cool, or a riot at this point. At best, he’s a sleepy, weird skunk. Like somebody’s creepy Drunk Uncle. 

Their Drunk _Skunkle_. Ugh, nobody likes those.

Phoebe and her jumpsuit have been gone for ages. Without her anchoring his attention, he drifts aimlessly in the conversation. Caroline and Martin are running their mouths about travel again. Something about antiques. Something about… oh, shit, Venice. They’re talking about Venice.

He _hates_ Venice, which isn’t exactly fair. It’s not Venice’s fault he went there on his honeymoon and behaved like a complete knob. Which was par for the course, honestly; just a total piece of shit in those days, with some legendary forays into sociopath territory. He would’ve left himself, too, probably far sooner than Helen did. 

That last glass of Sancerre or whatever the fancy fuck he ordered (thank God he’s not paying this bill) means he’s not entirely in control of which words are forming in his head and which are exiting his mouth. Did he just say the honeymoon bit out loud? Does he care?

“I don’t like all the water,” he hears himself warble. And he really doesn’t, he gets mad all over again just thinking of it. It’s so fucked up, the way the streets are the same swishy color and consistency as mouthwash! Whose idea was that?! Talk about a sociopath.  
  
He also happens to be quite passionate on the subject of vaporettos, which are even worse than regular buses, which he also hates, mind you. He should tell them about this, kick it up a notch. _A floating bus_ , he’s going to say. _It’s a crime against humanity_.

But then, he looks up. 

The other problem with that last glass of whatever the fancy fuck? His brain's gone so sloshy he didn’t even notice when the sisters returned to the table. Their vibe is a bit erratic, sure, but nevermind that, because yay! Phoebe’s back! Phoebe’s back! Hi Phoebe!  
  
He’s ridiculously happy to see her. So happy that he thinks he might tackle her and smooch her all over that stupid gorgeous face. He’s like a big dumb golden retriever let loose at the dog park, the one that has all the politely stricken owners rushing their drop-kick lap dogs out of his path. He wants to galumph around, panting, and drop a slobbery tennis ball in her lap. His tail literally might be wagging. 

(Do skunks have tails? Wait, of course they do, that’s the whole thing with skunks. They probably don’t wag them though. He’ll google it later.) 

She has really pretty ears, he’s just now noticing. He’s strongly considering licking one of them. She seems agitated, so it might help her calm down, being licked. And if she freaks out, he’ll just bark, “I couldn’t help it, you’re my human now. Let’s play!”  


* * *

  
Nothing like a weepy eye and a burgeoning shiner from your inappropriate crush’s remarkably pointy head to knock some sense back into a priest. 

He stands outside the women’s toilet, holding her coat and bag, like some kind of unholy cross between Fake Boyfriend and Self-Appointed Bodyguard. If by the end of the meal, he was a sloppy-drunk skunkdog, now he’s a stone-cold sober pitbull. Still incredibly loyal, but with less exuberant licking and more _do not fuck with my human or I will end you_ energy.

He doesn’t want to knock on the door, it seems intrusive. Lurking outside the ladies’ room feels stalker-y enough. Damn, though, what if she’s passed out in there? Should he knock? 

He decides to give her another minute. Actually, he’ll give her whatever the fuck she needs. And not in a dirty way, he’s not thinking about that any more. Phoebe is the only member of that insane family with a shred of integrity, and they’ve all left her behind. He is not going to do the same.

He’ll just wait, letting his mind drift again as he tries to piece together what the fuck just happened.  
  


* * *

Phoebe was not the one who had a miscarriage -- he'd known almost as soon as she’d claimed it.

The woman had been throwing back tequila shots all night. She’d snapped off about handling things in her own insane, irrational, anal way, which -- not that he knew her -- didn’t seem to be her way at all. She’d immediately backed his suggestion about seeing a doctor, like a reflex, like they were on the same team. She’d never taken her worried eyes off her sister.  
  
And meanwhile, Claire -- Claire had been absolutely heartless, shoving the glass of wine across the table like a gambit, biting out “It’s gone” with a look on her face he’d seen in another lifetime. Helen had worn the same slack, vacant expression as they waited on hard plastic A&E chairs for the sonogram, staring shell-shocked as he’d tried to comfort her with awful platitudes like, “Maybe this is for the best.” He _knew_ what a fucking miscarriage looked like.

Then Phoebe had decked Martin square in the face, and it had been everything he intuited about her character in one chaotic, calculating, selfless, saintly blow. Phoebe was absorbing all Claire’s rage, taking the pain on herself, becoming exactly the caricature her family believed her to be, so she could save Claire from Martin’s cruelty. Causing a public spectacle was her telling Claire, _See? I_ _love you._

* * *

_  
_ “Excuse me, sir?” a polite voice quavers from behind him. It’s possible this is the second, or maybe third, time she has repeated herself. How long has he been zoning out? 

Oh God, it’s their waitress. She’s clutching her nose, blood smearing her fingers and running down her forearms. It’s like a deeply earnest kiddy show adaptation of that scene from _Carrie_. Though there's no way this sweet thing, with her gigantic anime eyes and side ponytail, would’ve gone telekinetic scorched-earth on Martin. Unfortunately.

She’s glancing at him and then away, rapidly, like a hit dog afraid to holler. He finds himself holding up his hands, reassuring her that he’s unarmed and not at all dangerous. “Sorry,” he apologizes, and then she apologizes, and then he apologizes, and then she thanks him five times as she sneaks past him into the loo. Still apologizing.

He’s no stranger to posh women’s toilets (cf: total piece of shit). He thinks they’re pretty sexy, honestly - all that sleek, dim art-deco ambience. He likes the wallpaper in this one, looks custom. As the heavy door swings lazily shut, he hears the tap running and gets a glimpse of Phoebe’s silhouette: an impression of bare shoulders and back, the dark curve of her ass as she leans over the sink. She looks up at the waitress as she enters.

Shit. He lurches back against the wall like he’s the crime-fighting priest in one of those BBC buddy cop programs his gran loves. Has she seen him? Was he being creepy? It’s creepy to hang around outside a women’s toilet, he knows this. His heartbeat thunders in his wounded eye socket, and he jerks his arm up to press it into submission… forgetting he’s holding her bag.  
  
Apparently, the bag wasn’t zipped all the way, because a sudden hailstorm of office supplies and loose cigarettes and unwrapped pieces of chewing gum rains down around him. Christ almighty, typical: in trying to avoid looking like a creep, he ends up being _a total creep_. She doesn’t even know he’s waiting with her stuff, and here he is fucking bathing in it.

He crouches and starts shoving things back without really looking at them. She sure packs a lot of shit into that tiny bag. It's tough going for someone as unrepentantly nosy as he is. He’d give anything to flip through that diary he just tossed in. He grabs up a slim half-open box, and the sketch of a woman’s torso on the front stops him in his tracks. What the hell is body tape?!  
  
Oh. _Oh._ Every time he thinks he’s over that fucking jumpsuit, it finds a new way to torment him.

The last thing is a Boots receipt. He bargains with himself and decides he's allowed one final snoop. Body tape, £5. Starmix, £2. (The most horrid of all gummy sweets with its opaque fucking eggs; that’s one strike against her at least.) Condoms, £15: damn, how is he supposed to recover from knowing that she springs for the nice ones?! Fenty Satin Lipstick in Hot Blooded, £30. That price seems outrageous, but then he thinks about what it looks like on her hot-blooded mouth. Worth every penny. 

And with that thought: time to call it a night. There’s fun creepy, and then there’s creepy creepy, and then there’s playing with fire. He needs to dump her stuff at the hostess podium and get the hell out of there before he does something he’ll regret. She can take care of herself; she’ll be fine. He does a quick sweep as he heads for the exit, checking the floor for stray scraps, when he spots the corner of a white envelope slid under a plant stand. He toes it out. It’s the counseling voucher. 

He bristles all over again. He wasn’t kidding before -- he really would kill for proper therapy these days, instead of the occasional milquetoast pardon from the dopey lad the next parish over. But for your birthday? From your dad? As his current country music gal pal Carrie Underwood would say: Jesus take the wheel.

He does wonder, again, what’s really going on with her. Why her family is all but bullying her into counseling. Why they assume she’ll cause chaos wherever she goes, a fear apparently not unfounded. But how do they not realize it’s all coming from some place much more complex than simple grandstanding? That she isn’t so much making a grab at the limelight as shining an unforgiving beam on their massively dysfunctional family dynamic?  
  
Out of the corner of his banged-up eye, he could swear he sees a flash of russet fur and terrifying scrawny legs moving at a trot. Oh no way, not _this_ asshole, not tonight. Perhaps the fox can join the prat one table away from theirs who frowned at his wine all fucking evening, swirling it like a pretentious aficionado. Wine prats and foxes are a match made in heaven.

He knows logically that a fox has not wandered into an overpriced Covent Garden establishment. But there's the _feeling_ of a fox, and he knows what that means, goddamn it.   
  
He appraises the art lining the hall, high-end paintings that still manage to look like copies of copies. What now? Is one of them gonna crash to the ground?

Nothing.

This is classic The Lord. That omnipotent asshole loves to set the Jesus wheels in motion and leave the rest to him. He sighs and rummages around her bag for a pen. There are at least seven, it’s like a high street stationery shop exploded in there, with random bits of fruit and nut mix as shrapnel. Phoebe's kind of a slob, honestly. It's cute.  
  
Before he can overthink it, he scrawls his information on the back of the Boots receipt. He’s about to fold it into an origami crane, but that seems like overkill. No more creepy priest.

Then, behold, he stands at the door and knocks. And even though she doesn’t need his help, he waits for her.


End file.
